FIG. 1 shows a communication network comprising an access network 100 to which communication devices 101, 102, 103, 104 can connect. The communication devices may be mobile terminals communicating via a radio access network, or stationary terminals communicating via a wire-line access network. Exemplary communication devices are mobile phones 101, laptops or stationary computers 102, set-top-boxes 103 and machine-to-machine, M2M, devices 104. Different network nodes and/or servers may be connected to the access network 100. One such network node is a device manager server 110. The device manager 110 makes it possible to differentiate e.g. device settings to be sent to the communication devices 101, 102, 103, 104 from the device manager based on different groups that a subscriber, or owner, of a communication device belongs to. A subscriber can belong to one or more subscription groups. A subscription group may be limited to for example, subscribers with the same interest, subscribers with the same kind of subscription etc. Information about which subscription group(s) the subscriber belongs to is provisioned into the device manager and the information is coupled to the communication device of the subscriber. The device settings may be distributed to the communication device using a device management protocol.
It may also be of interest to distribute device settings depending on the location of the communication device. However, there is today no efficient solution for using a location of a device to determine what device settings to distribute to a device located in a certain area.
There is a device management protocol called Open Mobile Alliance-Device Management protocol, OMA-DM, specified by the OMA. The OMA-DM protocol is supplemented by Managed Objects, MO, describing how certain objects or devices may be managed over the OMA-DM protocol. One such MO is called Access Network Discovery and Selection Function, ANDSF, MO specified in the 3GPP OMA working group in 3GPP TS 24.312. The ANDSF MO is used for setting policies in a 3GPP mobile device, e.g. cellular phone, regarding which access networks the mobile device is allowed to select. In the ANDSF MO there is also location information which may be a parameter used for setting such policies. The location information is used in the Device manager together with information regarding which services a subscriber of the device is allowed to access according to its subscription to set policies in the device for which networks the device is allowed to access in a certain area. Consequently, different 3GPP devices in a certain geographical area may have different access network selection policies. In other words, the policies are not the same for all devices in a geographical area. Further, The OMA DM protocol is designed for management of mobile devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and palm top computers. In other words, the OMA-DM protocol may only provide location information to the device manager from 3GPP mobile devices.
As shown in FIG. 1, a communication network may comprise different types of communication devices. There is a need for an efficient solution for distributing geographically dependent information, such as device settings, to communication devices in a network, irrespective of the type of communication device.